nzonscreen in-progress

There’s been a fine team behind making it happen for NZ On Screen. Although you won’t see things in all their glory until the site goes live, we’d like to acknowledge the sterling work of the agencies Chrometoaster and 3months.com, who have respectively handled the design and development of the site.

While we have had the advantage of starting from scratch, there have been challenges in working with an evolving brief and in not knowing exactly where we want to end up before we get there. Designing and building the site using an agile framework has proven to be an ideal approach - we have all learned a lot and the outcome is fantastic! Full kudos to both agencies for their work so far.

More on our project approach and process (if anyone is interested) some other time

NZ On Screen’s intrepid travelling “Rights coordinator and industry liaison” person Kim Baker met up with expat kiwi filmmaker Roger Donaldson in Los Angeles last weekend to show him the NZ On Screen site in development and to talk about his work. The meeting went well - stay tuned for more details!

Meanwhile Kim is on her way to Cannes to do some work with the NZ Film Commission - we look forward to more reports!

Today Debbie, Sam, Kylie, and Clare visited The Dominion Post photographic library - who have kindly given us access to some of their photograph archive so that we can include photos on the NZ On Screen site.
(Thank you to The Dom…and especially Sarah Bartel and Lance Gunderson who tolerate our presence in their domain…).

We uncovered some magical photos to add to our collection - it was a bit of a blast from the past seeing presenters we’d forgotten about or actors in their early days of their careers. The photos bring together the people, the technology and the teams that have created great entertainment in New Zealand for many many years.

Clare and Sam

Just the tip of the iceberg…..

NZ On Air has been funding production of broadcast programmes (TV, radio, film, music) in NZ since 1989. A large proportion of the locally produced content we see and hear has been made possible through funding from NZ On Air.

As part of its digital strategy, put together in 2006/2007, the idea arose for a website to make as much locally produced audio-visual content available as possible - freely accessible to the public.

NZ On Screen is a project funded by NZ On Air.

With an initial focus on broadcast content, but expanding through connections with people and titles, NZ On Screen will bring our moving image history into your living rooms.

Taking the digitised video and making it web-ready is underway.

Yesterday we welcomed Leo and Harrie into the fold - giving them nice toys to play with and lots of pictures to watch.

Roll on hours of rendering and compressing and making things pretty!

NZ On Screen is hiring …

We’re looking for an online web editor (not a video/film editor).

Who we are:

• A small team of dynamic, motivated, friendly and hard-working people who are creating an iconic New Zealand website.
• NZ On Screen will be a showcase of moving image and sound content created in NZ or by NZ’ers.
• We are the people who are putting it all together.

Who you are:

• You are a person with a passion for editorial detail. You know where apostrophe’s go and can spot a spelling mistake a mile off.
• You know what style guidelines are and how to keep consistent tone through different pieces of writing.
• You know that writing for the web is different from other media, that online users have to be addressed in an online style, and ideally you know how to do this.
• You have a strong interest in, and ideally knowledge of, the NZ film and television industry through the ages.
• You have more than a passing familiarity with computers and the programmes they run (especially macs).
• You can spell internet, you know what it can do and are keen to be part of where it can go.
• You have a good working knowledge of colloquial Maori language and the evolving Kiwi vernacular.
• You can make order from chaos, enjoy working with creative people and keeping track of many things at once.
• You are familiar with information management, and content management systems and are not afraid to use them.
• You like small teams, are independent, motivated, self-managing and not afraid to defend your point of view.
• You are based in Wellington.

If you like the sound of us, and we’ve captured your key skills and interests in a nutshell … and you’re looking for 20-32 hours work / week … and you’re available asap … then send in your CV and a cover letter to Brenda (brenda at nzonscreen.com) by May 10th and we’ll talk.

It was an auspicious moment. One week ago the first lot of content, digitised by the NZ Film Archive, copyright cleared and ready to go, arrived at the NZ On Screen office.

Clare O’Leary, Content Director for NZ On Screen, used the well established ’sneakernet’ network to transfer the files.